Pi Day: Capitol Hill Nerds Tweet Out 3.14

Updated at 1:42 pm, March 14th, 2014

As every math geek knows, March 14 — 3/14 — is “Pi Day,” a celebration of 3.14, the approximate number used to calculate the area of a circle. And just like elementary school teachers nationwide, America’s lawmakers are pausing to honor the most obsessed-over number in the history of mathematics — and grab a bite of pie.

Sen. Robert Casey, D-Penn., used the fanciful holiday to promote STEM education:

In a less predictable policy tie-in, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, compared pi with the national debt. Unfortunately for Cruz, pi is what mathematicians call an “irrational” number — the decimals continue to infinity.

#HappyPiDay Hopefully there are still fewer digits in the national debt than in Pi when the debt limit suspension ends a year from tomorrow!

In 1897, the Indiana General Assembly almost passed a bill that would have effectively changed the value of pi to 3.2. Luckily, a Purdue mathematician intervened and pi emerged unscathed.

And filibustering pols could take a lesson from China’s Chao Lu, the Guinness world record holder for pi recitation. Lu reportedly spent 24 hours and 4 minutes reciting — from memory — the first 67,890 digits of pi without a single bathroom break. That’s just 14 minutes shy of the longest congressional filibuster on record.

Even Healthcare.gov joined in the Pi Day fun with a tie-in of its own: